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10 industries that will lose the most jobs over the next decade

In last week's U.S. unemployment data from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics was the following prediction: The 10 U.S. industries that will face the biggest job losses over the next 10 years. (Specifically, from 2008 to 2018.)

The ranking is based on the raw number of jobs the BLS predicts to be lost, not the percentage drop in the sector's employment rate, but I'll include that too. Here they are:

1. Department stores: Will lose 159,000 jobs, or 10.2 percent of their workforce.

2. Semiconductor and other electronic component makers: Will lose 146,000 jobs, or 33.7 percent of their workforce.

-- Heck of a time to hear this, with the official U.S. unemployment rate at 10 percent and the truer rate over 17 percent.

-- No surprise that department stores are losing businesses to big-box category-killers and online shopping, nor should it be a surprise that chip-making is moving offshore.

-- Consider the size of the auto parts sector if 101,000 jobs is only 18.6 percent of the workforce.

-- The drop in USPS employment comes from two reasons: The Postal Service has lost package delivery to FedEx and UPS and has lost letters and bills to e-mail and online billing.

-- Paper information -- books, magazines and yes, newspapers -- continues to slide, which will be good news to the tree-huggers.

-- I thought the only state where people still worked at gas stations was New Jersey, where self-service is illegal. Seriously, increased auto reliability and quick-oil-changes chains continue to eat away at gas station employment.

-- Think about it: When was the last time you used a pay phone? And if you have a land line home phone, do you use it for anything besides DSL?

This is nonsense since it does not include the American jobs in computer technology that will be lost. Or perhaps the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not consider it is a lost job when an American is replaced by a foreign worker.

Over two million American jobs have been lost since 2002 by outsourcing overseas American jobs and no mention of this from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

India may get $1 billion in IT outsourcing contracts
Reuters November 23, 2009
The newspaper said JPMORGAN, GOLDMAN SACHS and MORGAN STANLEY that received approval to pay back government stake worth $68 billion earlier this year are among the firms seeking operational efficiencies by outsourcing non-core IT and back-office projects to India.
..............................................
IBM to Cut 5,000 Jobs. Washington Post March 26, 2009
Officials began notifying employees on Wednesday and throughout yesterday about the layoffs. Technology services giant is in the process of shifting a large number of jobs to lower-cost regions, such as India.

Seems like it would be helpful to juxtapose the info from the BLS's Table 3 here - that is, the 10 industries expected to GROW the most, which seems to be heavily dominated by the health industry.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t03.htm
We can whine about losing jobs all day, but we could really USE some info about where we should be LOOKING for jobs in the next few years.